‘Nigeria needs modified presidential system’

As the National Assembly is set to review the constitution, Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu has proposed a modified presidential system. Assistant Editor ONYEDI OJIABOR examines the proposal within the context of the clamour for parliamentary system by some delegates to the National Conference.

Deputy Senate President Senator Ike Ekweremadu has called for a modified presidential system, saying that it will deepen democracy and foster development.
He reflected on constitution reforms in Nigeria at Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC. The senator spoke on the theme: “Constitution Review in an Emerging Democracy: The Nigerian Experience.”
As the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Review of the 1999 Constitution, Ekweremadu led the upper chamber to successfully alter some provisions of the constitution in 2010.
He said certain provisions in the constitution become unworkable because circumstances have changed to render such provisions inappropriate. Thus, the Senate committee had to adopt an incremental approach to constitutional changes.
Previous alterations, he said, have undoubtedly deepened democratic ethos by confronting outstanding problems and addressing glaring omissions.
He said that the process reached a major milestone, with the passage of three alterations to the constitution by the National and State Assemblies in 2010 and the assent by President Goodluck Jonathan in 2011. “Unprecedented in the constitutional history of Nigeria, these alterations not only provided a more credible institutional framework for the conduct of the 2011 general elections, but have also furnished a viable template for ongoing initiatives to implement further constitutional alterations, amendments, revisions or reforms,” he said.
Ekweremadu highlighted the challenges of constitution amendment. These include the need to create ‘a people’s constitution,’ bearing in mind the procedural imperative, especially the perception that the 1999 Constitution is not a true people’s constitution, but a contraption that was forced concorted by the military regime and its civilian allies.
According to him, the constitution reform process is driven by the need to address substantive flaws. He said the 1999 Constitution has been criticized by many groups for imposing a hyper-centralized, top-down, “unitary federalism” on the country, as distinct from a “true federalism” that is more consistent with the country’s complex ethnic, regional and religious diversities. He spoke on the federal structure and the proposal that the six geo-political zones in the country should be elevated to federating units.
The proponents of six geo-political zone as federating units, he said, believed that the structure will rectify the present distorted and dysfunctional federal structure and reduce the over-centralisation of the federation, eliminate the costs of maintaining multiple state administrations, establish more competitive and robust constituent units, correct the current imbalance in the distribution of the states among the geo-political zones, and generally make for a more functional, viable, and sustainable federal system.
The position of those rooting for geo-political zones as federating units notwithstanding, he said the National Assembly is inundated with demands for the creation of more states by agitators seeking a more equitable territorial accommodation of ethnic, sub-ethnic, and geopolitical interests.
At the last count, the National Assembly has received over 60 separate proposals for new states. For him, transforming the six geo-political zones into federating units “seems the major plausible thing to do if Nigeria is to nurse any hope of significantly reversing the dwindling fortunes of our federalism by engendering viability and self-reliance of the component units, massive development, healthy competition, reduce the cost of governance, and enthrone an acceptable level of equity.
Of interest to him is the situation where geo-political zones are already moving towards regional integration for development. The innovative example of governors and leaders of the Southwest. In Nigeria the fundamental issues are fiscal federalism and local government system, policing, legislative lists, independent electoral and other oversight agencies, electoral systems, governmental systems, tenure of political chief executives, residency rights and constitution amendment process.
On fiscal federalism, Ekweremadu had described intergovernmental fiscal relations as “feeding-bottle federalism,” whereby the constituent states are funded almost entirely by centrally collected and redistributed oil revenues.
Some of the consequences of defective fiscal federalism listed by him included fiscal hyper-centralization and paternalism, a weak sense of financial responsibility and transparency at the sub-national level, and a feeling of economic dispossession in the oil-bearing Niger Delta.
He, however, said that the persistence of regional socio-economic inequalities will continue to require a strong redistributive economic role for the central government in the interest of national cohesion and integration.
How to balance the competing imperatives of fiscal decentralisation and inter-regional socio-economic equalization remains a difficult constitutional question.
He canvassed a revisit of devolution of powers between states and local governments. According to him, “since the current half measures have not yielded the desired result of grassroots development, we may have to adopt either the Canadian or US model or even the Indian model.
“If the legislature determines that Nigerians prefer the former, it means then that the Federal Government will have to completely hands off the local governments in respect of regulation and funding. “Thus, the local governments become an entirely state affair and cease to draw funds directly from the Federation Account and states would be at liberty to create as many local governments as they feel would be adequate to bring government and development closer to the people.
“On the other hand, if the preferred option is the Indian model, then the local governments will become a third tier of government in the true sense of it. “Powers will be fully devolved to them so as to insulate them from the fiscal control and political manipulations by the states.
“My view is that we can adopt the Canadian model and leave local governments as state affairs. The states should determine the number of local governments they want to create and how to fund such local governments. The sheer size and population of India necessitated the Indian model where Local Governments constitute a third tier of government,” he said.
On governmental systems, Ekweremadu posited that the presidential system has often come under criticism for its concentration of powers in political chief executives, encouragement of divisive, zero-sum factional and sectional competition for political offices, expensiveness, and promotion of the politics of strong men, rather than strong institutions.
Supporters of the current presidential system, he said, point to the failures of parliamentary rule in the First Republic, claiming that the trouble with Nigeria is not the choice of governmental systems but the warped implementation of these systems.
“I suggest a modification of the present presidential system. We need the presidential system to hold together the contending forces of our federation. Such modification includes the introduction of question times in the parliament to hold the ministers consistently accountable and replacement of impeachment with a procedure for vote of no confidence” he said.
It may be imperative for those imbued with the art of constitution reform to consider the paradigm of a modified presidential system as suggested by Ekweremadu, especially at this critical period in the life of the country. A modified presidential system of government if well articulated may help to mitigate already bad situation.
Ekweremadu said that the National Assembly constitution review committee has managed Nigeria’s complex, contentious, and multifaceted constitutional reform process. The Assembly has given a nod to the imperatives of a democratic and participatory constitutional reform process through various mechanisms for promoting popular participation and public consultation in the process.
It has pursued an incremental approach to constitution making, thereby reflecting the difficulty of achieving mega-constitutional change in Nigeria’s fractious and contentious polity as well as the need to avoid aggravating the existing stress points or fault lines of national politics.
The National Assembly has implemented constitution amendments designed to strengthen, or enhance the neutrality and independence of critical oversight institutions like the electoral commission, the legislature and the judiciary.
The Assembly has also given recognition to non-constitutional renewal, whereby reforms can be achieved through legislation, informal political conventions, and judicial interpretation, as distinct from the more tedious and contentious mechanism of constitutional amendment.
He added that at the same time, the National Assembly has been attentive to demands for more fundamental constitutional changes in by accepting these demands as critical inputs into a continuous process of national constitutional dialogue and reform.
“I believe all of these aspects of the constitutional reform work of the National Assembly have been critical, and will remain pivotal, to the sustenance of Nigeria’s current, most enduring, experiment in federal constitutional democracy” he said.